Jeremy Piven: Reluctant Gawker Star

Two things apparently distract Jeremy Piven, according to CNET TV host & CBS correspondent Natali Del Conte who was on Fox's Red Eye last night: her breasts and Gawker.

She says this was back in the spring. Perhaps in March, when we asked what the hell he was doing at a Microsoft party and noticed him touching himself a lot during photoshoots. But whenever it was, while Del Conte tried to get an interview with him started, he was furiously checking his BlackBerry mumbling that he'd been on Gawker. He then started looking at her tits.

Before getting fired from/quitting his Broadway show Speed-the-Plow, he spent a night off sending a mass text message to ladies, telling any/all of them to come to his hotel room. Whoever got there first, won him for the evening. That's how he ended up with his current girlfriend, 23-year-old model Ashley Chontos.

He also, inexplicably, sent a "six paragraph" text to View prattler Sherri Shepherd.

E! gossipeuse Ted Casablanca says that Piven was actually fired from Speed-the-Plow, rather than quitting.

And, finally, he went seeking treatment for his suspicious ailment in Thailand, of all places.